Geraint Davies
Main Page: Geraint Davies (Independent - Swansea West)Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Geraint Davies Excerpts
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the Beecroft proposals about no-fault dismissal amount to a charter for intimidation and harassment, including sexual harassment? A boss could say to an employee, “Will you sleep with me?”, and if she said no, she could find herself sacked.
Vince Cable
That is going rather further than I would want to go with the argument or the evidence.
Vince Cable
There are separate developments taking place that do not require primary legislation, and they will improve the quality of information available to shareholders. The Financial Reporting Council has responsibility for that, and I do not have the powers to direct it, even if I wanted to, but the quality of information is intended to improve, and we certainly want to see a range of information made available, including the aggregates that my right hon. Friend describes, as well as simpler and clearer information. That process is taking place in parallel with this Bill.
The Bill will improve the way in which competition is promoted and policed. The UK’s support for a free and open trading system remains fundamental to our economic strategy, and the steady pressure from competitive markets ensures that businesses boost productivity and consumers benefit. Our competition regime has been well regarded, but it can be too slow, and recently there have been some worrying criticisms about how it has managed cartel offences.
The reforms that I propose are designed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of competition enforcement, operating through a new competition and markets authority, backed by streamlined and strengthened powers. The current division of responsibility for the two phases of the markets and mergers regimes, between the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading, can lead to a duplication of activity and the inefficient use of resources. Further, the time it currently takes to complete mergers, markets and anti-trust cases is often far too long, and that in turn imposes additional costs on business, including on those that pose no threat to competition.
Our reforms to the competition regime are designed to create a single, strong voice for competition and a one-stop shop for business; to create greater certainty for business, thanks to faster, clearer and, indeed, statutory time frames; to provide for more effective action to tackle anti-competitive mergers, including the discretion to suspend them; and to provide for robust action to tackle cartels, which can damage business and consumers alike, by removing, for example, the need to prove dishonesty. In addition, it will be easier for businesses to ask the new competition and markets authority to halt uncompetitive practices while investigations are ongoing. These measures go hand in hand with proposals, on which we are currently consulting, to allow businesses to take private actions to stop anti-competitive practices and to achieve redress.
Another aspect of our reforms relates to intellectual property rights, an issue that the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), raised a few moments ago. The modernisation of copyright is critical to investment in the UK’s creative industries, one of our most successful export sectors. Research by Imperial college and the Intellectual Property Office shows that annual copyright investment in artistic originals in film, TV and radio, books, music and art was about $5 billion, twice the original estimate. Spending on UK design amounts to almost £33.5 billion, and there are about 350,000 people in core design occupations of all kinds.
The sale of unauthorised replicas of classic designs, such as a lamp or a piece of furniture, means that firms that depend on design can lose out, so the Bill ensures that those designs that are also artistic works and, therefore, qualify for copyright protection will be protected for 70 years from the creator’s death, instead of for the current 25 years.
The Bill also creates an order-making power that will allow the Government to make any future changes related to copyright exceptions or exceptions to rights in performances. The practical consequence of that will be to maintain the level of criminal penalties, in which as I said earlier I have a personal interest, given that my private Member’s Bill introduced the current maximum penalty level of 10 years’ imprisonment
In addition, the Government have made a number of proposals in response to the Hargreaves review of intellectual property and growth and subsequent consultation. They are needed to ensure that the copyright system is fit for purpose in the digital age. It has been decades since the intellectual property regime was overhauled, during which time the world has changed beyond recognition. It would be negligent to leave unchanged a system suited to the cassette recorder in an era of iPads and cloud-based music services.
Primary legislation will be required for three of those reforms: the introduction of a scheme to allow extended collective licensing; one to allow the use of orphan works; and, finally, a back-stop power to allow the Government to require a collecting society to implement a statutory code of conduct, should it fail to introduce or adhere to a suitable voluntary code.
The Government’s proposals on extended collective licensing and on the use of orphan works are designed to make it simpler for users to use copyright works legitimately, while protecting the interests of rights holders. At the same time, introducing codes of conduct for collecting societies will provide valuable reassurance to the thousands of small businesses and other organisations, including creators, that deal with them.
The Government are finalising their response to the consultation on those three proposals, and if we decide to proceed we will want to move swiftly. The Bill presents an opportunity to do so, and I shall announce a decision on the matter as soon as possible.
Geraint Davies
How does the strength of law on copyright compare with that on patents? I am thinking of the international duplication of a copyright, such as on a chair, as the Secretary of State said, and how the law will be enforced internationally.
Vince Cable
I do not think that there is any link between patents and copyrights in this case; they are separate systems of law. The hon. Gentleman will know that in the European Union there is already a unified approach to patents and to copyright, but we are trying to ensure that in the UK context copyright protection is properly enforced. That is the purpose of the changes before us.
Mr Umunna
I think it is reasonable, when people have been treated in an appalling and unfair fashion by their employers, that they should be properly compensated.
The Bill contains a related measure to give the Secretary of State the power to vary compensatory awards for employers of different descriptions. The Employment Lawyers Association, of which I used to be a member, said last week that having different rules for micro-businesses, for example, would make people think twice about working for small businesses, knowing that they would have less employment protection than if they worked for a large employer.
We have no objection in principle to the proposal to introduce early conciliation by ACAS in advance of the full submission of a claim to the employment tribunal. I understand, however, that the Government intend to spell out more of the detail in secondary legislation. It is therefore essential that any future regulations be subject to the proper scrutiny of the House. Early conciliation will result in a claimant who is seeking redress having to go through two different processes, with different time limits and different forms to fill in, before instituting a claim. It will therefore be important to ensure, particularly in relation to unrepresented claimants or those with poor literacy and numeracy, that the new regime does not act as a barrier to justice for those seeking redress. Above all, it will be important to ensure that ACAS is properly resourced to carry out its proposed new expanded role. We know that its resources have already been reduced. The Secretary of State and his Ministers will need to give proper assurances and guarantees that it will be properly resourced to carry out this work.
The Bill also contains measures relating to the composition and workings of employment tribunals. As I have said before, we are not opposed to reforming the way in which employment tribunals work, given the frequent problems that employees and employers experience while navigating their way through the system. That is why we supported the establishment of the Underhill review. However, that is quite different from tampering with people’s fundamental rights at work, which we oppose.
Geraint Davies
Is my hon. Friend aware that, in Wales, 70% of procurement goes to small and medium-sized enterprises, half of which are based in Wales? In England, however, the figure is around 7%. Would it not be a better strategy for rejuvenating small businesses in England if we were to focus the power of procurement—green procurement in particular—on those businesses, rather than slashing the rights of the people who work in them?
Mr Umunna
I certainly agree that we should increase the procurement opportunities for our SMEs. When we were in government, we put in place a number of targets, which this Government have sought to build on. We should certainly ensure that those businesses have better access to those opportunities; I speak to many such businesses that tell me that they do not.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
I think the Bill is not just a lost opportunity but a thinly veiled attack on workers’ rights. It pretends to be about growth, but contains no real growth strategy. In Britain and across Europe, the big political issue is growth versus cuts to get down the deficit and balance the books, but we are seeing that austerity literally is not working. On Sunday, the Greeks will hold another election, but what are they being offered? Cuts in their pensions, their salaries and their jobs—further poverty. On the plus side, why are they not being offered investment in solar forests across Greece, to provide energy for Europe; in railways, to connect up the tourism business; in universal broadband, to connect them to the world; or in a share of research and innovation? Where is the balance? It is not working.
In south Wales, the area I represent as a Swansea MP, we want electrification of the railway to Swansea, a lowering of the bridge tolls and cities working together in city regions—an initiative I am pushing forward locally. We want a fiscal stimulus like the one seen under Brown and Obama, when what could have been a world depression ended up becoming fragile growth. Now, we have zero growth thanks to the Chancellor suddenly announcing that he was going to sack 500,000 public sector workers—Bob’s your uncle, people stopped spending their money, growth came to a standstill and the deficit is £156 billion higher than previously forecast. Austerity simply is not working.
I welcome the green investment bank and the £3 billion fund, but I think what we really need to do is refocus our procurement on green companies and SMEs generally to generate the jobs and production needed to support public services. As I mentioned earlier, in Wales, 70% of procurement is spent through SMEs, 50% of which are based in Wales, whereas in England the figure is 7%. The Government spend 93% of the taxpayers’ money with great big companies—normally international companies that generate jobs abroad and do not pay tax here. It is completely crazy. We should be using our procurement facilities to generate green jobs, in particular in SMEs, but the Government simply are not doing that.
What about the devolution debate—devolving tax powers to Wales and Scotland? I am highly sceptical about that. At a time when, across Europe, we are seeing a monetary union that increasingly requires fiscal and political union to work, we are being urged to devolve borrowing and tax to the regions and nations of the United Kingdom. Obviously, the political trick here is to say to Wales, “You can borrow. You can tax. If you want some more spending, raise your own money from a weaker tax base.” We can see where that is going and I do not think that people will be fooled.
Beecroft’s proposals are the hidden agenda. The Business Secretary says that they are a load of rubbish, but we can see a diluted version of them coming through. It is basically a charter for intimidation and harassment. As I said earlier, if a female employee says no to a boss who asks, “Will you sleep with me?”, the next thing that is going to happen is that she will lose her job. It may be a bit more subtle than that, but that is the sort of pressure that we are seeing through a re-invention of Dickensian Britain and a forthcoming Dickensian workhouse. This is retrograde, unnecessary and completely contrary to where Britain should be going.
Regional pay is another attempt, certainly in Wales, to reduce pay. It is to be reduced by about 20%, at a time when 40% of workers in my constituency are in the public sector. They are seeing their jobs cut, their pensions cut and their pay frozen, and now the Tories in England are saying, “We’ve got a good idea. We’ll cut your pay by 20% and completely take the base out of the local economy.” This is completely ridiculous. It would mean that a GP from Swansea would be paid more if they were in Bristol. We want to attract inward investment from people who want decent schools, decent health services and all the rest. Are they going to come to a place where the Tories have denuded that in the name of regional pay? At a time when the local authority offers 10 apprenticeships and gets 800 applications, there is no shortage of people wanting to work.
This Bill is a mean-minded, pathetic and unambitious bit of nonsense. Nye Bevan pointed out that, in times of great economic difficulty, there is dynamic struggle between private property, equality and democracy, and ultimately the Tories will attack democracy in order to load the burden of the mistakes of the rich people—the bankers—on to the backs of the poor. What we are seeing in Wales is not only the reduction from 40 to 30 MPs, and not just individuals now not required to register to vote and not just the latest attempt to say to the Welsh Assembly Government, “You will never have a majority Government again, because 30 will be elected by first past the post and 30 by regional list”; this is all part of a carefully choreographed situation where poorer people will have fewer MPs and will vote less, particularly in places such as Wales, in order to keep a Tory Administration nationally. This goes back in time to the orthodox austerity, and making the poor poorer and giving back to the rich on the 50p tax rate. This stinks, and it does nothing for growth. We have a Prime Minister who preaches growth while he is in Europe but practises austerity at home. This is a mean bit of legislation and it is a lost opportunity. At a time when the global spotlight is on Britain with the Olympics, we should be ashamed of ourselves.